


First Steps

by Dawn Woods (charlottechill)



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman (Movies 1989-1997)
Genre: M/M, OC, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-26
Updated: 2010-06-26
Packaged: 2017-10-10 07:10:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/97036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlottechill/pseuds/Dawn%20Woods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The first Robin," and what Batman thinks he means. Written for the first Batman movie starring Michael Keaton. The "robin" character is an OC.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Steps

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in Manacles Press's "Concupiscence 3," October 1993.

_How does one appease the manbeast? Creature of the night, yet he rises and sets with neither the moon nor the sun; with the constant crisis of Life outside him, and his own addiction to changing its course. For better? For worse? Ah, but that is merely an attitude of mind...._

 

Bruce Wayne stood silently at his study's wide bay window, staring out past the long, rolling lawn and high stone walls, past the road beyond and the scape of the city beyond even that, seeing nothing. "Alfred?"

"Yes, sir?"

"When will it end?"

"Eventually, sir," Alfred replied, unruffled and quite, properly, certain.

Wayne turned, casting a smile across the emptiness between them. "Do you even know what I'm talking about?"

Alfred considered for a moment. "Would it matter if I didn't?"

Wayne's smile faded as if it had never been, leaving only the winter chill within him and the growing emptiness without. "No," he whispered, turning away, "it probably wouldn't. Thank you."

"You were referring to your solitude, were you not?" Alfred questioned lightly, breaking the lengthening silence.

Mute, everything inside him utterly still, he nodded.

"Yes, as I thought. So I was aware of your reference, just as I am aware of your present... dilemma." Oblique references were as natural as breathing for Alfred....

Matthew's face rose in his mind's eye, clean hard planes of anger and eagerness, hair brown and thick whipping defiantly around broadening shoulders... eyes that flashed pale blue lights and white-toothed smiles that made Wayne's muscles coil with hunger. "There's no dilemma, Alfred, I've made my choices. Thank you." And this time it was a tone of dismissal. _Leave, leave now before I fall even further into this pitiful morass of confusions. Leave, Alfred. Let it pass._

"There is the young man."  
"No," he whispered, willing the stillness to remain with him. "Matthew was a mistake."

"I think not," Alfred demurred, in that almost paternal voice that warned he would brook little argument. "Manbeast like yourself, he needs what you have to offer almost as much as you wish to offer it. He is too young to understand himself, much less the power he commands. And," he added pleasantly, almost as if surprised by the revelation, "I found his company quite refreshing."

At that Wayne turned, utterly surprised. "He was always underfoot, you said so yourself. Forever in your way with questions and complaints and demands, you swore he left you with no privacy at all."

"Yes," Alfred nodded, "all true. And yet the light he brought with him was welcome in this house. Too much stone and plished wood, too much tradition here—" a chuckle, a wave of an ancient, wrinkled hand "—and he treated it like a street alley. Obviously," he added with all due discretion, "his light warmed you as well. Like the house, you've needed a bit of fresh air for far too long. Dependable fresh air." He cleared his throat.

Wayne felt himself blush, was astonished that Alfred could bring him to that after all these years. "He's so young," he defended, dampening his embarrassment. "It would have been... inappropriate."

"Perhaps. But if you'll permit me to intrude I might add that you need him even more than he needs you."

That was certainly the truth; a subliminal awareness of Matthew's presence somewhere in Gotham still moved with him, remaining always just beneath the skin. That had never happened before. He wished he could shed it, had in fact tried to do just that every day since he had banished Matthew from this place. "You're probably right, Alfred," he admitted, "but kicking him out was for his own good. I won't let—"

"Would you prefer to meet him as an enemy one day? There is every likelihood that will happen, now that you have abandoned his tutelage. He is a very self-serving young man, after all."

"You'd rather I kept a catamite?" he snapped, slicing his arm through the dead air between them. He was losing patience. His personal life should remain at least somewhat personal—even Alfred had no right to the liberties he was taking.

Alfred obviously disagreed. "He would hardly be that," came the smooth, unruffled reply. "In fact, I'm certain he was quite smitten with you."

"Infatuation."

"Grows into better things when properly tended." There was a smile in that voice that said altogether too much.

"He's sixteen years old; we offered him security, education and as much food as he could eat. Any incidental gratitude shouldn't be construed as an emotion he doesn't even understand."

Alfred nodded as if in agreement, but Wayne knew the man better than that, and waited. "I recall another young man of sixteen, who was quite certain of what he wanted, and the lengths to which he would go to get it. Further than I thought appropriate or safe, but my opinion was inconsequential. He had known what he wanted for some years, by that point, and made sure I knew it! I recall that this same young man understood both preference and social convention, and was well aware that one had little to do with the other."

Wayne just stared, as time dilated back until he could see the same picture Alfred saw: himself, young and full of energy, of the same determination that remained with him even today. At sixteen he had been the product of his early years, his dead parents' money, and Alfred's constant attention—he had never been hungry and he had never truly needed anything without getting it. He turned away from both the image and the man who had presented it. "Alfred, this isn't a conversation I want to continue."

He listened to the barely perceptible tread of Alfred's footsteps as they receded toward the study's sliding doors. They paused, and he steeled himself. "Perhaps this young man could benefit from the same care you received. It isn't too late for him, and certainly his feelings for you were obvious to us all."

"Feelings?" He heard his own bitter laugh. "He doesn't even know he arouses me." Wayne wasn't sure why he said that; it wasn't something he and Alfred usually discussed.

"He knows more than you—or he—thinks." And then Alfred slipped from the room and the doors slid closed, leaving Wayne alone again with his thoughts.

* * *

A week passed. He made the mistake that Alfred had waited for him to make. He went discreetly to a favored club, desperate to alleviate the ache of loneliness that had preyed on him like a rat chewing his nerves. The man was young and lovely and didn't recognize his face. Introductions were friendly. Hours over drinks and dinner warmed Wayne, sparked interest in his mind. He brought the man home, they engaged in particularly athletic sex—

He should have known better.

In the morning, Alfred served coffee in the dining room at a small leaved table by the French windows, raising a subtle, knowing eyebrow. Well, Alfred was right. Bruce Wayne said his goodbyes to his itinerant sex partner, with no plans to see him again. One-night stands had never been his habit. As a singular goal, the mechanics of sex when there were other priorities were utterly pointless. Alfred, bless or damn him, said not a word about the aberration.

Perhaps he said nothing because he knew; rather than assuage any need, it made the ache for Matthew that much worse.

Wayne threw himself into his various works as more weeks passed.

Business, as snarled and political as ever in a city like Gotham, plodded on, offering its own tangled monotony to days and nights as calmly depressed as a flat sea. The house proper was a silent prison, stiff and unaccommodating, and he avoided it when business didn't call him to use it. Only his own private rooms seemed welcoming, and he knew it was because Matthew had never been in them.

Nights were immediate, present-tense functions of the winter chill and movement, the Suit enhancing nerves that seemed dulled without it. The opposite should have been true.

The passion to serve was his only solace, and he spent more and more time in the cave. The bat was hungry, always hungry; Bruce Wayne was frustrated, and indecisive. He had never before experienced himself as two such distinct personalities. He had never felt at such odds with the bat.

Sitting in the cave, glasses propped on his nose, he was reviewing various newscasts with a jaundiced eye. Mundanity. Boredom. Depression. He heard Alfred approaching with the file folders he'd requested from the house, and turned his head. Not folders. Newspaper. And the look of worried remorse was all too readable on the man's face.

"What is it?"

The newspaper dropped heavily to the desk in front of him. "It's what I feared. Young Matthew is trying to get your attention."

On page three, bold block letters headlined a report on the theft of a Rhodin bronze from the Gotham Museum of Art. The method of burglary was unique and required amazing skill, including timing, acrobatics and unusual dexterity. An unidentified young man whose description Matthew might have matched had been seen running a roof ledge with a bag under his arm. Even without that description or the unusual methods, he'd have known; the bronze was Matthew's favorite piece. The need for Matthew melted into the obligation he had denied. He scrubbed his hands across his face, feeling the dichotomy and frustration settle quietly, gently, into the past. His glasses clattered on the desk.

"It's time to find him, Mr. Wayne."

Damn Alfred for being right, anyway. "Help me with the Suit."

* * *

For the first time since Matthew had gone, the darkness was a sensuous pleasure. He moved stealthily through it, slipping from shadow to shadow, little more than a shadow himself. The sounds of the city were all around him: muffled cries of children, voices echoing in the darkness behind the thrum of machines. But there was only one voice Batman sought, only one echo that was sorely missed and, as Alfred had pointed out so brutally, sorely needed.

Time hadn't cooled the need. The slow death of fall, the chill approach of winter, and the business of Bruce Wayne had done nothing at all to dull its sharp edges. Meetings and politics, polite luncheons with partners and adversaries, had all jumbled into a meaningless waste against the emptiness inside him.

But now, hungering for light and life and order in the black shadows of night, he sought all those things in one young man. There were so few places Matthew could be, really; a few select alleyways, of if not there then on a hight rooftop—old buildings. It was the work of moments to reach a height, to wing from building to building as he followed that subliminal thread of awareness.

Close.

Closer now, and as he landed silently atop Gotham Tower he felt he should have physically stumbled over him by now.

A hiss of parted air made him turn, and he was caught by a well-laid trap as suspended weight slammed against his chest, knocking him to the asphalt of the rooftop.

"What're you doing here?" a sullen voice demanded. "Dragons to rescue? Maidens to slay?"

That familiar voice, even its unfamiliar anger, whetted a hunger in him so sharp it was white-hot and searing, indistinguishable from pain. "I was looking for you," he said quietly, righting himself and turning around. Dressed in street clothes, denim and cotton and leather and shadows, narrow hipped with youthful muscle fighting the entrapment of skin and cloth, Matthew was the very picture of desire. "Why did you steal the Rhodin?"

"I had to eat," Matthew snapped, and all Batman saw was the hug of fabric over flesh, the anger snapping in blue eyes that shone inky black in the night.

"But you haven't sold it."

Matthew's eyes darted away. "It isn't easy to fence."

"You know you won't actually sell it. You love it too much to see it disappear into someone's private collection."

"That's where you're wrong, bat."

He scowled; the insult had grown old months ago. "Alfred suggested that you wanted my attention."

"Alfred was mistaken."

"Really? I often think that Alfred can't make mistakes. I've watched and waited for years, myself."

"Yeah? Well, you go back and tell him he missed on this one."

This wasn't the time to argue, not with the blood surging in his veins and chasing the eternal stillness away. He wanted nothing more, in that moment, than to drag the young man close, to grapple on this rooftop in the cool, dark cover of night.

"Come home."

"So you can kick me out again?" Such anger fired, burning so bright it threatened to blind his sensibilities. It was breathtaking.

"No," he whispered. "So I can show you the truth."

"And what's that, then?" Matthew demanded, more mistrustful now than he had ever been, even in the beginning.

It seemed probable that Bruce had waited too late to undo the wrong and recollect his charge. "I've wondered for some time, now, if you really want to know."

"I know all I need to know about you," Matthew sneered.

Memory flashed fiercely in his mind, of his own confused youth; only the willed wealth of his parents and Alfred's persistent patience had seen him through it. "You know so little, and think you know so much. You don't even know what you need."

"Oh, and you do?"

Again he faltered, distracted by the urgent response of his body, noting it almost absently as he lifted a hand and, slowly, dropped it. "Yes. You want what I'm offering."

As he spoke, Matthew had turned away, arms low and outstretched to embrace the darkness. Now he whirled around, his fury a clear admission of his pain. "I wanted it the first time you found me, too. And now I'm alone again. You screwed up."

"You're right." Hot blood pulsed through his groin, distracting him. It was difficult to concentrate on things other than the clear message his senses offered him. He raised his arms, wings lifted high to catch the night, to breathe it in—and watched Matthew's eyes widen. The cape snapped sharply in the quiet air. "You're right. I screwed up. And I'll probably screw up again. What we are... what we are doesn't make us inhuman. Mistakes happen, and that's never going to end."

"You said it would."

"No." The sounds of humanity filtered up, the rush of traffic and honking horns, a scream in the night— "No, I said it would get easier, not that it would end." He cocked his head. "Do you hear that? A woman's scream. She's being assaulted, for her money or her body. Either one of us could reach her in less than a minute."

Matthew's head turned; he looked, inhaled deeply the city air. He turned and shoved the heel of his hand against the Suit, angry. "Go, then."

"Should I choose?" Someone else was receiving similar handling out of earshot; he couldn't save everyone. Intercession was a habit, not a compulsion.

Matthew turned away, and shook his head in silence; the bat launched a wire and descended the sheer wall. Two blocks, no more. More distance to cover vertically than horizontally. Thugs who fed on the darkness in much the same way he did, dealt with in less time than it had taken them to steal her purse and herd her into the alleyway. Not even a word to the woman, as anonymous a victim as they had been aggressors; back to the building and his trailing wire, up the building's side. Matthew was still there, waiting.

"Come home."

"Why?"

The tenacity of youth; even Matthew should recognize by now that he would come. It felt like a century had passed since he had experienced that determination, that conviction to a self-importance he no longer knew. Now, life was duty, an offering of himself to a people with whom he felt no kinship and yet to whom he felt a grave responsibility. And here in the darkness was yet another responsibility he had never considered trying to escape. Here in the darkness stood yet another responsibility, one that he welcomed and anxiously desired.

"Because I want you to. And because you want to come."

And now, finally, arrived the honesty of fear. _"Why?_"

"Why do you want to come? Because you need the education and I can give it to you, and you want the security of a home and people who love you. And because I'm the man you want those things from.

"Why do I want you to come? Because I have everything you need, and offering it to you gives me pleasure." He paused for breath, the words somehow more difficult to say than he had imagined. "Because I have an emotional investment in your education, and in you. Because I want you," he admitted flatly, offering everything in the words. "I needed you more than I felt was safe, or sane. I still do. And I still think it's unfair to you. Come home."

He waited, fighting the burning heat that flared with such fury at the mere sight before him: angry, wild, child-man. He waited for some glimmer of awareness that, finally, arrived in stuttered, uncertain words.

"I... I don't understand."

"Probably you don't," he agreed quietly, stepping closer. He reached out a gloved hand, fingertips skimming without sensation from the bared throat down over tight fabric, grazing a nipple that had risen against the cold. "I don't understand it myself."

The dark head had dropped, watching the gloved hand as it slid over chest and belly. Matthew jerked back quickly, and the unfelt physical connection was severed. "Shit," he muttered, taking another step backward, staring up at him. "You were gonna take me home and rape me? That was the plan, Bat?"

Older and wiser, with embarrassingly greater strength and skill, the bat descended, cape flying in the briefest of struggles until Matthew was pressed tight, sandwiched between the waist-high ledge and his body. He envied the Suit, the alter ego that pressed hard against young, inviting flesh, all the while appreciating the very necessary barrier between them. "I never once gave you cause for fear or concern," he grated, pinning the youth with sheer strength. "I never once threatened you with any need or desire of my own. You're being petulant and antagonistic to accuse me of doing it now." He stepped away, jerking Matthew from his near-perch on the roof ledge before releasing him. "Stop it and come home."

"But..." Matthew shivered, "but that's what you want, isn't it?"

"To touch you? Kiss you? What do you think I want? To love you? Fuck you? What do you think made me track you through Gotham City when I knew what it would mean for me?"

"I—I don't know!"

He stepped closer, staring down into wide, dark eyes. "You said that already." Reaching carefully, holding tightly, offering any excuse this young man needed, he kissed him, accepting the unique taste like a drug that seared his veins with pleasure. Matthew's mouth opened, his tongue invited—Bruce pulled away, grappling with urges the bat thrust upon him. "Obviously, you do know. Come home."

He watched the confusion play over Matthew's shadowed face, felt his heart kick at his ribs as Matthew licked absently at his lips. Dark eyes darted toward the building's edge, and when Matthew jumped to the ledge and over it, out of sight, the bat turned away. Matthew could be fifty, a hundred feet down the building's face by now, and chasing him would only make things worse. He forced his blood to cool, his heart to still. He opted to practice patience.

He hadn't really expected it to be easy. He still wasn't completely sure that Alfred was right.

The night in Gotham offered much in the way of distraction, if not appeasement, and the cool light of dawn blushed in the batmobile's rearview mirror as he approached the Cave. Leaves eddied and swirled, tree branches obfuscated the pinks and oranges of the approaching sun. The mountain wall loomed ahead; he pushed a button, passed silently through and into the pitch of the bat cave. He had spent hours in the city, not-quite-pointlessly traveling the heights. Responding to the activities of the night like an automaton, he had resisted the compulsion to find Matthew again.

That may have been another mistake.

Leaving the car he stepped to the edge of the parking deck, staring over the lip of the sheer drop and thinking about how long it had been since had had felt this confused... since he had felt this _much_. There was no room amidst paternal feelings to lust, no room in nurturing to dominate. No room in caretaking to hunger.

He could sense the depth beneath his boots, wanted abruptly to strip off the Suit and lie with his cavemates, feeling their warm fur and their simple, straightforward appetites. But he felt out of kinship without knowing why. With too many questions and too few answers, he turned from the cliff's edge.

"Lock," he whispered, hearing the car's tempered steel mechanisms ring like applause through the chamber. Bats tittered, their wings fluttered, stirring a breeze that he felt against his mouth as he took the stairs three at a time, unsealing the gauntlets while he moved. He stripped off and stored the Suit in silence, stood for a moment in the chill, slowly moving air. It swept his naked skin like a caressing hand, and made him think of Matthew.

Alfred had laid out clothes, and he slid into them without thought: trousers, briefs and sweater, socks and dark leather loafers.

"Lights out," he said, stepping into the elevator as the cavern returned to pitch. The gravities tightened his muscles and teased at his balance.

Alfred was in the kitchen.

"Good morning, sir."

"Good morning, Alfred," he answered, stepping around the table to take a coffee mug. The pot steamed, smelled of vanilla and cream.

"I prepared a breakfast in your study, sir," Alfred continued, opening the morning paper and folding it back.

Wayne smiled, filling his cup. Alfred obviously had better things to do than continue to hold his hand. "I saw him last night, you know."

"Yes," from behind the paper, "you had said that you would. With good results, it would seem."

He frowned, and sipped carefully at his coffee. "I don't know. I didn't think so, at the time."

The paper crackled, folded down, and Alfred stared up at him over his bifocals. "It did indeed go well," he said coolly. "Matthew has been here for several hours, and is waiting with your meal."

He felt his muscles tighten in surprise, while Alfred snapped the newspaper back up between them.

"He is more like you than you know."

"Thank you, Alfred."

"You're quite welcome, sir." The replay was absent as the older man continued with his reading.

So Matthew was here. He'd returned of his free will. Bruce Wayne chalked up another point for patience, and took a long swallow of his coffee.

Matthew was here.

When he focused his attention, the energetic presence was hard to miss.

They wouldn't have the Suit between them now.

He wasn't sure that was a good thing. In fact, his abrupt hunger for its presence was almost overwhelming; it was warm security against the hunger, over which he felt so little control.

"You're quite welcome to take your coffee into the study, sir," Alfred said into the silence, and Bruce almost dropped the mug.

"Ow!" he hissed when splashing coffee hit his hand. He almost wished Alfred would get ruffled over—well, over something. Anything. Certainly, over the fact that he fully intended to shack up with a sixteen-year-old boy. _Young man,_ Alfred would say, _manbeast to be more exact, and by this point his age is irrelevant and you surprise me to consider it as if he were just like anyone else._ Buce Wayne couldn't see a difference when he looked at Matthew, the principles he had adopted to serve Gotham City an unbroken, unrelenting rhythm of self-restraint. He couldn't reconcile rethinking them, and he had no idea how Alfred could consider the concept with such ease. He didn't know what to do now, and—he jolted up, overturning the cup and splattering coffee across the counter.

Alfred hrmphhed. "Please, sir, leave that for me to take care of, and go before you do any real damage. I'm certain that he won't—or can't—hurt you." All this, Alfred managed without once moving the newspaper.

He wondered how Alfred knew. Certainly, Matthew seemed capable of inflicting more emotional damage than Bruce Wayne had been vulnerable enough to feel in a decade. However, there was the minor fact that Matthew was sitting alone in the study, contemplating a cooling breakfast and the rising sun. Matthew, if he had been willing to return here of his own free will, wasn't likely to go away.

"Does it matter to you, Alfred, that I think this is an incredible mistake?"

The newspaper snapped crisply as Alfred folded it closed and laid it neatly on the table by his plate. "In as much as you are uncomfortable with your current dilemma—certainly, sir, your concerns are my concerns." The brown eyes stared at him, warming by slow, steady degrees. "But I believe that I may be more objective in this case. You, after all, are afraid of almost everything the boy represents."

Bruce started, righted the coffee cup and dropped a dishtowel over the spill. "That's the first time you've ever called him a boy."

Alfred shrugged, and carefully crossed his fork and his knife across his plate. "I do not deny that in some few ways, he is still a boy. Neither do I deny that overwhelmingly, he is a man, and fourteen months won't change anything that frightens you about him. Your concerns would be valid in another case, and I would certainly counsel you to avoid other young men at all costs. Not this one."

He couldn't identify the heat that swept him: part fuy, part hunger, and a whole host of fears. "Why? How can you so calmly offer that—that child—" he would never speak aloud to Alfred the hungers that raged within him over this particular boy. Man. Manbeast. Whatever Matthew was. He didn't even have words to express it. Neither had he intended ever to act upon them.

"You're acting more immaturely than he is," Alfred snapped, uncharacteristically. It was so rare for Alfred to raise his voice that Bruce swept his confused emotions aside automatically, turning his eyes to his friend with his whole attention. "You practice petty fears and for what, because you bend traditional conventions? I apologize for my interference but I am quite sure you'd have destroyed this opportunity before it ever happened!"

"The laws have to apply to everyone; you know that. The conventions I've adopted are the only limits I have, Alfred. Without them...."

Alfred sighed, and reached over to rest cool, aged skin against the back of Wayne's hand. "Were I not certain that you complement each other, and that you will continue to do so, I would neither condone it nor support it. You're right about that." Alfred pursed his lips, visibly composing himself. His eyes dropped to the tabletop. "Have you considered even once over the years, that time keeps passing? I certainly will not be available to you forever, and the thought of so poorly fulfilling my duties as to leave you alone is abhorrent to me. Such isolation you choose, and that is your right. But there are limits, and I have watched and waited for you to find someone for whom you felt this depth of commitment."

"I think you're confusing commitment with carnal interest."

Slowly, almost meditatively, Alfred's eyes rose to meet his. When he spoke his voice was heavily solemn. "Can you truly not see that everything you have done is an expression of the depth of feeling you hold for this young man?"

Bruce dropped his head, confusion fogging his mind, constricting metal-tight around his ribs. He whispered, "No, I can't."

A sigh. "Well, what was your motivation for bringing him here in the first place? What did you see in him, what compelled you to take the risks I'm sure you felt you were taking? Aside from that, explain to me the caretaking, the teaching... the comforting and explaining. The sheer enormity of emotional investment you have made." A pause. "Even the pushing him away."

The constriction tightened, shifted with animal awareness so profoundly toward his groin that he flinched. "I—"

"Please, just go to him. Whatever your fears, know that they are greater than his."

He had to agree with Alfred on that point, at least. Matthew allowed his fears to drive him; if he was too terrified, he wouldn't have come back. But Matthew had returned here, even after gleaning some vague understanding of the complex appetites he confronted.

Matthew wasn't stupid. But Bruce Wayne had been. "Thank you, Alfred," he murmured, retrieving his coffee cup and moving for the door.

The newspaper rustled in his wake. When Alfred spoke, his voice was formal, smooth, and completely unruffled. "You're quite welcome, sir."

Bruce left the kitchen without another word.

"Matthew?" he called out quietly as he pushed open the sliding door. Artificial lighting was off; the early sun cast stark, dark bars of light and shadow across the study. Dust motes seemed thick in the light, floating before bookshelves left too long undisturbed. Matthew sat silently in one of the two padded leather armchairs that blocked in the end table, one long leg hooked loosely over its arm. The look on his face was scornful.

Bruce took in the setting, the mood, and went to the silver serving cart, opening trays and loading a plate with food he had no intention of eating. The coffee urn sat off to one side, and he refilled his mug before looking up again. Matthew was staring at him, the aggressive façade a fallacious cover for nervous tension. Terrified he might not be; frightened and uncertain, he definitely was. Bruce could understand the feelings.

The couch, perpendicular to the chairs, was too close; the empty chair, out of the question. He left the plate on the cart's sidebar and sat down on the windowseat, deliberately offering his face to the shadows from the window panes.

It was probably his responsibility, as mentor, to break the silence. More of the truth seemed like a good place to begin, and he started with the questions Alfred had asked. "When I told you I didn't understand it myself, I wasn't kidding. I wish I were."

"You've gotta understand it better than me." The voice was bitter, challenging him. _Don't count on it,_ he wanted to say.

"I certainly thought I would." He looked out the window, watching the stark, crisp morning shadows being methodically eaten away. "The world isn't a black-and-white place, Matthew. It's a confused jumble of... well, of things. Feelings. What people bring to it. Emotions, motivations, hungers and fears. Forces people can't control and don't understand."

"Lecture Number Seven?" Matthew sneered.

He turned, and met defiant eyes. "I'm talking about sex with you, all those things that frighten you, your—and my—concern that it might make you something you're not, and shouldn't be," he said bluntly. Matthew started, and flushed. "I wanted to take you to bed the day I met you, and I wondered even then if bringing you home was a mistake. But you had other needs that I knew I could fulfill, and to keep those things from you because of my own hungers would have been cruel. I've had a lifetime of experience restraining various urges, and I thought my attraction was a temporary interest, an infatuation. By late September, just before I asked you to leave, it was a constant hunger that never left me a moment's peace." Matthew's eyes were wide with fear, but Bruce had his complete attention now. "I watched you here, isolating myself more and more from you because whenever I saw you I itched to touch you. I'd get aroused just being in your presence.

"I didn't trust myself, and I had never struggled with something like that before in my life." He shrugged. "So I told you to go rather than risk your staying. I was... afraid... that if you stayed in this house, if you understood, then you'd offer me your body in exchange for the other things I offer you. I was afraid I'd demand it, in fact. I'd accept it on those terms." He sighed, swallowing hard against the tightness in his chest. "On any terms."

The silence that descended was heavy, and he simply watched the fear skating across attractive features, watched the slow cool distance working painfully hard to regain control of Matthew's face. It won, eventually. Matthew tossed his head, flipping his hair back over his shoulder. Bruce closed his eyes.

"Guess you've been busier than I have, then," he replied. "I was just pissed off at you."

"No you weren't. If you're so intent on demanding the truth from me, the least you can do is offer it in exchange. Just for today, tell the damned truth!"

"It scared me," Matthew answered immediately, bristling a little. "I was fuckin' terrified, you'd given me stuff I'd never had before. You understood, you could explain things to me—" he glanced around the room and swept his arms wide, "—not to mention the obvious, but all this, this _junk_ of yours didn't matter. You told me to trust my instincts, and I did. I trusted you because of them, and I ended up out on my ass without knowing why. What'll keep you from doing it again, that's what I wanna know."

The answer was too easy: _your desire, your interest. Your hunger, a hunger that matches my own. Your satisfaction, at my hands, and my expense. Everything. _ "What do you think will do it?"

Matthew looked at the floor, scuffed his tennis shoe against the heavily waxed hardwood. It was the first uncertain move he had made. "I thought, maybe, sex would do it. You um, made it pretty clear just now that I was right."

Had he lost every scruple that had guided him until now? His body was responding, groin tightening at a sacrificial offer. "Yes, that would probably do it," he admitted, the truth of it making the words quaver when he spoke them. He was disgusted with himself. "But it isn't a price you should have to pay." The bat's hunger screamed for satisfaction against a rigid iron control that forbade it. The blood coursing in him pounded, tightening his muscles, taunting his body. He hadn't felt so victimized in years.

Matthew looked up and met his eyes, serious, with the intensity of an animal examining danger. Abruptly the scrutiny faded, and Matthew grinned self-consciously. He sauntered over to the window seat and folded himself into the bench, less than a foot away from physical contact. "Geez, you don't make this stuff easy, do you?"

Bruce shook his head. He wanted the Suit, the cave. The coarse cotton and spun wool he wore were nothing, transparent. He felt naked already, and Matthew was too close. "No. It's too easy already."

"That's what you think," Matthew muttered.

Bruce whipped out his hand, burying it in the coarse heavy weight of dark hair and holding steady against the reflexive jerking away. Matthew's breathing jumped; his eyes were wary and the fear was all too evident. But damn his teenaged fickle arrogance, he sucked in his stomach and licked his lips, consciously choosing to lean into Bruce's hand.

"C'mon, Bruce," he challenged, "don't make such a big thing out of it. Just kiss me again." The blue eyes were wide, and filled with guile. it was depressing to know how much calculation guided every move Matthew made here.

"I could wait fourteen months."

"That wasn't the impression I got last night." Matthew frowned, embarrassed. "I sort of thought we wouldn't get through breakfast first, from what you did last night."

Bruce didn't want to; the bat did. There had never been such a conflict of interest, and even sitting here with Matthew's skin against his palm, the equation of emotion and hunger and practical logic didn't add up. The bat hungered; Bruce feared; fourteen months might as well be an eternity, for that hunger; Alfred was certain that this was the match he'd been looking for.... Abruptly the answer he had ignored or denied all this time reared up and stared at him, overlaid transparent and shining across Matthew's determined face. The one thing that Bruce had been unwilling to trust, or even consider. Silly of him, since Alfred was always right. He leaned forward, and felt that first conscious sexual touch of lips to lips like th cooling caress of water on fever-hot skin. Matthew whimpered, and the bat recognized the fear. He could smell it, hear it in the high strained sound.

He drew away slowly. Smiled. "You don't know what you want."

Matthew blinked, said nothing. Raised a hand and stretched it slowly toward Wayne's bare cheek, the only skin the Suit would have let exposed. Fascinating instincts Matthew had, he noted absently. Matthew's hand touched his cheekbone, and made him think of the cool caress of breeze in the cave. He wondered if they should go there.

No. Not _they._ The promise of food was more than enough to instill an almost eternal patience in the bat. Bruce trusted Alfred's certainties above his own reservations. He chose, finally, to see the unacknowledged hunger in Matthew's eyes. They were the same in more ways than Bruce had imagined, too. Maybe the kid would never have considered it, without prompting. But Bruce doubted that.

"Patience really is a benefit, Matthew, if not a virtue. I'm going to kiss you now, and then I'm going to go to work. I was never interested in raping you, or forcing you. You'll decide on your own, and when you do you'll tell me."

He leaned forward, pressed his mouth against Matthew's and carefully opened it. He slid in his tongue, tasting coffee and familiar young man, gently urging a response he was certain of, now. It came rushing and loud like thunder, in the jerking inhalation of breath, the stiffening of tongue against his own and the abrupt, blunt reply. He ended the kiss as quickly and carefully as he'd begun it, licking the soft lips damp on parting. Matthew's eyes were bright, the irises pale thin rings around black pupils. He licked at his lips, as if they didn't belong to him, and looked more afraid now than he had before.

"Uh..." Matthew blinked rapidly, shaking his head once. Hair fluttered around his shoulders, catching dark copper bits of sunlight. "Uh... what if I want to stay and not, you know, do it with you. Can I do that? Or will you kick me out again? Don't bullshit me, Bruce."

Amazing, how a shifted perspective made everything so clear. The certainty he had depended on, trusted for years, was back. The bat understood, and was patient. "You can stay here and avoid intimacy with me—and no, I won't kick you out."

"I can stay without—but I _can't_ stay without... I don't get it."

Bruce spoke the words he hadn't believed until a moment ago. "You can stay here. Sex isn't a condition. I'll even make my word legally binding, if you like. Guarantee you money and shelter and a plethora of other things you need. Guardianship or something equally quaint. But you'll come to me anyway. You're no more able to avoid it than I am." That was what Alfred had referred to. That was what Alfred had seen and understood, because he was on the outside looking in: a similarity bordering on twinship. If he hadn't kicked Matthew out three months ago, they'd be sharing a bed already.

Matthew bristled. "Oh yeah?"

Bruce smiled. Ignorant youth rebelled against the very forces of nature. It was stunning. "Yeah."

In a flash, the kid was off the window seat and bouncing on the balls of his feet in the middle of the room, fists balled, energy crackling around him. Denying everything he didn't understand. As if the denial would change anything. "What the hell do you know? I'm no faggot!"

"Yes," he said, and actually felt a smile stretching his lips, "if you're tied to labels that's as good a label as any for you." It was bizarre—and hilarious—to realize it.

"Take that back!"

The kid really did have exceptional lungs. "No."

If Matthew thought he could actually hurt Bruce Wayne, he'd have tried to do it. It was written in every tight, angry line of his body. But he couldn't, and they both knew it, so Matthew continued to glare and Bruce began to smile, until finally, swearing and kicking at furniture, Matthew stormed out of the room. Bruce sipped at his coffee, amazed at how summer-warm and bright the pale winter seemed. Ridiculous.

Something overturned in the hallway and he yelled, "Don't knock over anything you can't pick back up yourself! Alfred has better things to do than clean up after your tantrums!" just as he'd yelled it those months ago. Fiery, predictable, delectable—and hungry for the same thing that Bruce was hungry for. No wonder Alfred had snapped at his obtuseness.

As he was draining his coffee mug, a light, formal tread approached the open doors. "Shall I remove the breakfast cart, sir?"

He chuckled. "Yes, Alfred, please. Did he break anything we can't replace?"

Snowy brows pulled firmly together, a confused frown. "Not in my estimation; he merely left a trail of overturned furniture and fallen bibelots in his wake. He certainly does make his presence known, doesn't he?"

"Just remember, you were the one who thought he was 'refreshing'."

"Really?" The look was formal, opaque, and obviously amused. "I may have been mistaken."

"Oh no, it's too late for that now."

"As you say, sir. May I ask after your plans for the day?"

He hadn't really thought about it. There was so much to do, and for the first time in a long while he wanted to do it. Business held a certain fresh, competitive appeal; the night called again to his very cells, urging them to more vigorous life. "Reading, I think. I have reports to review for a business meeting on Monday afternoon, and I'd like to finish them today." He shrugged. "I may sleep. Nothing that requires any planning."

"Very well." Something clattered to a wood floor in the distance, the echo ringing eerily through the halls of the house. "I daresay you may have other interruptions," Alfred added doubtfully.

Wayne tilted his head, tracking the sound of Matthew's progress through the ballroom and dining hall. "Yes, probably. Hopefully you'll get your share of those, too. I really do have work to do."

"Somehow I doubt that my attentions are the ones he'll seek today."

Bruce refused to read in any innuendo. Alfred, always the discreet and proper servant when a partner was in the mansion, would never have admitted to it anyway. "Don't count on it. He doesn't understand yet, and he'll be making life here hectic for weeks—yours and mine."

Alfred glanced out the open door, into the long empty hallway. "Somehow I doubt that, sir. He knows, all right; it is why he runs. Perhaps even why he is so angry. You may find your respite altogether too brief."

Another clatter sounded: silver on marble. The dining hall sideboards. Amazing, how pleasant the sound was to his ears. "I wouldn't presume to debate you, Alfred." He sighed, smiling at his friend. "Bright looking future ahead? Noisy, boisterous, busy?"

Without twitching a muscle, without a flicker of eyelids on the impassive face, Alfred smiled. "I daresay, sir."

* * *

Thirty pages into an environmental report on gasworks, Matthew strolled coolly back into the study. "Place hasn't changed much since I left," he said.

Bruce looked up, set his papers aside. "Except for the chaos you just made, throwing things around. I thought we'd gotten that out of your system before you left."

He shrugged wide shoulders, turned to face him, planted his feet apart and canted his hips pointedly forward. The pose was unmistakably aggressive, and unquestioningly appealing. "Guess not."

"Pick everything up, please."

"I did already. Wanted to talk." There was nothing in that pose that wanted conversation. Matthew still wanted to fight.

Bruce threw down his pencil and leaned back in his chair. "What did you want to talk about?"

"This stupid thing you think, about me."

He retrieved his pencil, and the report. "There's nothing to talk about. It's your decision."

"What if I don't believe you?"

"Then you're being purposely stupid, and we both know you better than that." He returned his eyes to the report.

"What're you doing?"

"Reviewing a pollution report for a factory someone wants to build. Why are you distracting me?"

He felt the angry glare without even looking up. "Who says I am?" Bruce flicked a glance up at Matthew. Turned the page. "Well what else is there to do around here, anyway?" Matthew went on. Definitely whining, now—Matthew's first and strongest method for getting what he wanted. It wouldn't work anymore, but Matthew didn't know that yet. Bruce looked forward to seeing what other behaviors Matthew would replace it with.

He waved a hand vaguely. "Anything you want. Exercise. Read. Run, watch a movie. Just as there always was."

"Come work out with me."

He felt his body flicker with interest as the bat prodded him toward animal urges, and swallowed back a smile. Manipulative, cunning, Matthew knew exactly what he was doing. "When you tell me, and not before, then I'll touch you. Until then, don't play with fire."

Matthew blushed, kicked the corner of the desk, and stalked back out of the library.

Wayne watched him go, indulgently shaking his head. His own fruitless compulsions had been driven by fear, by the sense that Matthew was completely ignorant and that higher principles should preserve that ignorance. But Matthew wasn't naïve; he was willfully stubborn, in Alfred's opinion, and deserved all the headache he got from trying to tie himself and everyone else in knots. Bruce Wayne wouldn't go that far—but it was all too obvious that the kid did know what was happening, that his sexual awakening had begun long before the bat had begun to slaver for him. Matthew could fight it all he wanted; the hunger could wait, now that it was certain it would be fed.

He didn't know if his patience would hold out, though.

Matthew stalked him all day, pounding him with small questions about inconsequential matters. Testing his reserves, his commitment. Brushing against him for no reason. It was amusing, to see his body behave so politely in the face of such temptation. "Please, just leave me alone for an hour and let me finish my work," he finally begged late in the afternoon. "Go find Alfred, I'm sure he's looking forward to talking with you."

"I don't want Alfred, I want you." Bruce glanced up, stared at Matthew until the words registered. Pale cheeks flushed with blood. Blue eyes flickered, then darted away.

"Yes, we've had that conversation already. I'm glad you're beginning to agree. Dinner's at 8:00 in the kitchen, as usual. Now please, go and find something to do until then."

"Would you just stop for a minute and talk to me?" he asked for the hundredth time.

"No." Matthew stormed out yet again, and Bruce watched him go, smiling. It was a pity Alfred didn't advise him more frequently; yesterday, he'd been sure he was losing his integrity and his sanity. This morning, he'd been equally sure that weeks or months of patient waiting would be a breeze. Now, he was just as certain that he wouldn't get through the night before Matthew lit upon him. The embers of desire, banked securely now, glowed warmly with the breath of anticipation. He released a long, heavy sigh, and returned to his work.

Matthew didn't show up for dinner. Bruce prowled the house afterward, listening. A faint, repetitive squeaking came from his rooms, rooms Matthew had never before trespassed. He paused, cataloguing the familiar sound: his perch, Matthew was swinging from it—tiny arcs, from the staccato creaking.

As silently as he had approached, he slipped away.

He went down into the cave, his body light against the elevator's rapid descent, knees flexing as it slowed abruptly. Frigid, dense air met him as the doors slid open, absorbing the dryer, less substantial heat he'd brought with him from above. He padded in the darkness to his information center, settling into the chair and retrieving his glasses from the desktop. "Office light." A lone overhead spotlamp whuffed on, cutting a stark cone of light from the surrounding darkness. "Screens. One, tou, four." Local news flashed soundlessly in front of him; microfiche scrolled slowly on a smaller monitor to his left, and number four just faded into aliveness, waiting for UPI requests.

In the thick, heavy silence punctuated only by the natural alive whispers of his kin, his mind was thirsty for the first time in months. He scanned through news reports and microfiche, finding patterns of criminality, of danger, that he hadn't seen before. Research that had seemed pointless two days ago struck instant sparks of recognition tonight, led obvious paths that he had been too detached to connect. He hadn't realized to what extent his sexual preoccupation with Matthew had endangered the city he watched. Certainly for Gotham's sake, Matthew's virtue would have been an inexpensive sacrifice.

He was still pleased that it wasn't necessary.

Some few hours passed before an unnatural sound intruded on the silence; rubber soles on wrought iron. Matthew had taken the stairs, padding slowly, surely through the inky blackness. Less than twelve hours, for the kid to consider every available possibility? Because there was only one reason for Matthew to seek out a bat in its cave. Only one.

He watched the stairwell entry, saw the lighter shadow stirring the darkness. Watched it step out from the door and move slowly, stalking. Teen feet from the circle of light the shadow stopped. Posed. "What are you doing down here?" Amazing, his body didn't even jump to attention. And it should. Matthew was freshly dressed in damning jeans and snug tee-shirt. His hair hung like silk, clean and inky, its silhouette blending eerily into the dense blackness behind him.

Matthew stepped forward into the edge of the light. His skin was riddled with goosebumps; his nipples pressed tautly against the stretched cotton of his shirt. "I just came to tell you you're a jerk."

"Oh. If you're cold, go get a jacket. Use the elevator this time, I didn't realize I'd locked it down here."

The dark eyes examined him minutely, furtively, taking in quick pieces of his body then skating off to stare into the distance, as if his meager vision could penetrate the darkness around them. "You didn't lock it down, I just wanted to walk."

"Fine." He turned back to the UPI monitor, tapping a mouse button to continue it scrolling.

"I still can't believe you're going to make me do this, you know."

"I'm not going to make you do anything."

"Except get fucked."

This was what Alfred meant when he said that in some ways, Matthew was still a kid. Worst-case scenarios, painting vivid pictures of things about which he knew little or nothing. Preoccupation with the one thing that wouldn't happen, not for months at least. "If you 'get fucked,' as you so charmingly put it, it won't be by me. I have no intention of doing that; that's all in your head."

"What do you mean?" His tone was indignant, now, and Bruce actually smiled at the screen.

"Did you want me to fuck you?" he asked, rolling the trackball beneath his index finger, selecting and saving a particular article. The lean body bristled, fists clenching; he caught the movement out of the corner of his eye.

"Hell, no!"

"Then what's the problem?"

"Well..." there came the characteristic scuffling of feet, "maybe I don't believe you."

"No one's asking you to believe me," he said absently. "Believe me or not, I still won't fuck you." He shrugged. "Time will tell."

"Alfred said—"

He pivoted in the chair, half rising, and fixed a stern, angry glare on Matthew. "What you and Alfred discuss is your business and his," he grated, "and he deserves his right to privacy. Particularly if the subject is me, I don't want to hear about it. Do you understand?"

Matthew had jerked back a step at Bruce's aggressive motion; he edged forward again, and settled back into a deliberately sexual posture. "New rule?"

Bruce settle back in his chair. "Yes."

Matthew rolled his shoulders, consciously stretching the cotton across his chest. He slid his fingers into the front of his jeans to frame his crotch with his hands, brazenly—completely aware of what he was doing. "Well, what if I got a rule of my own, bat?"

"It depends on what it is and who it benefits. Nothing's changed since you were living here before."

Matthew stroed long-legged, hips swinging, the last few paces to the chair. He planted his knees outside Bruce's legs and slid forward onto his lap, settling his buttocks and his weight. Heat bled between their thighs through the double layers of fabric. The ephemeral presence of genitals whispered against his own. He tilted his head, staring up into the near-black shadow of Matthew's face. The thick silk hair curtained around it, overheard lighting shining faint auburn highlights through it. Matthew was smiling with salacious intent.

_That_ certainly got his body's attention.

"I'm waiting," he said coolly. "What's the rule?"

Deeper shadows rose up from under pale skin. Darkest lines of eyebrows furrowed together above eyes that shone black in the dim light. "Don't make me ask."

Carefully, he reached out, settled his palms against the uppermost curve of buttock. The denim was coarse under his bare skin. "And who does that serve?"

"Me."

He wondered, staring up at the frightened hunger in dark eyes, how he had ever missed something so obvious. No wonder Alfred had lectured him above and beyond the call of propriety. Anyone would have seen it.

He squeezed his hands, gently, against dense muscle. "I can't. You have to tell me. It's the only way this is even remotely fair to you."

"Fair?" The voice broke, still crackled when it continued. "You think it's fair that I have to ask you to—" muscles clenched against his thighs, "—to do something you wanna do anyway? You think it's fair that I have to ask for... I don't want to say this, Bruce, I don't want to be it."

"Then don't." He slid his hands carefully up, resting his fingers safely above the waistband of the jeans. "Get up and walk away, with no recriminations. It has to be your choice, and you understand why. You don't need me to explain that to you."

"But you know what I'll choose, isn't that what you said this morning?" He was breathing as if he'd run a marathon, chest heaving, hair trembling, breath breezing heavily across Bruce's bare face. The weight that pressed hot against his thighs, the muscles that twitched against him, the crotch that felt firmer now than it had been two minutes ago, even the strain that punctuated the nervous, confused words—all of it combined to express exactly the choice Matthew was making, a choice he couldn't avoid making because to deny it was to deny his very nature.

"You know what you'll choose, Matthew," Bruce whispered, unmoving. "It doesn't matter what I think." He sat quietly, listening to the deep, panicked breaths, wondering if the sound would unnerve the bats.

"What's it gonna make me, Bruce?"

"Who told you it would make you anything you aren't already? This isn't transformation. It isn't metamorphosis. You're nothing now that you weren't two days ago." He heard a choked hiccough, and wondered at the emotional stress Matthew determined to wring from himself. "What do you think I am?" he questioned softly. "How different am I now, from what I was to you yesterday, or last week?"

That earned him an honest, if nervous chuckle. "I hated you yesterday and last week."

He smiled up into the shadows in dark eyes. "Poor example." He shifted his knees. "Go upstairs and get something warm on. Alfred will kill me if I let you get sick your first day back with us."

He hadn't considered that the one thing to prompt admission was to send Matthew away from him. But apparently, that was all the young man needed.

He felt the whisper of air first, as hair fanned and floated; Matthew's face dropped to his, blotting out the faint traces of overhead and monitor lights, and abruptly Bruce was being kissed with all the passion and all the fear a teenage body could contain. A tongue insinuated its way into his mouth, urgent, and Matthew's weight against his chest flattened him back in the chair. They were precariously balanced, mouths sealed tight together, the creaking of the chair's castors the only unnatural sound in the cavern.

Bats twittered. The drone of moving wings vibrated afresh in the air.

Matthew pulled away, breathing heavily. His fingers were laced tightly behind Bruce's neck. Bruce reached up, combed his fingers through tangling hair, and pulled it back off his anxious, shadowed face.

"Impulsive, aren't you?"

"Whatever." It was beautiful, this slow watching as living art performed before his eyes. Every new sensation was unique to Matthew, and every feeling wrote itself through the shadows and over strong, clean features.

He patted gently at one buttock, urging Matthew off him. "Go on, now, there's no reason to push yourself—"

The words geysered up in a rush, whispering like silk across his ears and skin, graphic and all too expressive of forethought. "C'mon, bat, do it. Fuck me, make it with me, whatever you're gonna do with me. Touch me, c'mon, I'm not going anywhere, touch me. Show me, Bruce. Show me."

Like lightning arcing against a night sky, the hunger called up from the bat's very instinctive depths flashed. Raw powerful natural beauty scorched him. "Easy," he whispered, taken aback. Trusting his instincts where he hadn't before, he let the hunger reign, let it wash in heated, luscious waves over him.

"Please—"

He drew Matthew's head down to silence him, hollowed his belly to make room for his free hand. Jeans' buttons gave way; the narrow hips slid and rubbed against his thighs. He turned his head, breathed into the mass of hair, "You want to let me up? Or were you planning on doing it in the chair?"

A ripple passed through the slender body against him. "Can we?" Intrigue purred sensuously in the quiet voice.

Bruce wondered what, exactly, he had loosed here. "Save it for some other time. Get up."

Thigh muscles bunched under his resting hand, and he followed Matthew up out of the chair. Matthew's lips were wet and slightly open. The blue of his eyes was swallowed by wide-dilated pupils. Bruce stood there staring, holding a narrow wrist to keep Matthew still. It was his first unshadowed view of Matthew's face since the kid had stepped into the light, and his body feasted on the hunger he saw there. Stepping backward, unwilling to separate or go upstairs or even find a nest deeper in the cave, he pulled Matthew with him and leaned back against the desk.

The monitors backlit him, their diffuse light chasing shadows from Matthew's face so he could watch it. No finesse here, no need for romantic flourishes or sophisticated seduction techniques; Matthew wanted sex with him, and wanted it now.

His fingers worked stiffly at the denim, easing it down enough to slide his hands over smooth skin and tight, dense muscle. Matthew's head fell back, from the touch of his hands or the renewed tug of denim across his crotch the bat neither knew nor cared. "Easy," he breathed, sliding his hands to Matthew's front and thn to his own, easing the button of his trousers open and the zipper down.

The new noise galvanized Matthew into action, and suddenly there were hands everywhere on him, urgent and inexpert, pushing his trousers open, tugging his shirt up, sweeping underneath it to touch as much new skin as they could find and coming finally, solidly, to rest on his chest. He'd held still under the unplanned attack, letting Matthew learn him however he wanted, sure that no touch would be too intimate or daring. Not yet. Fingertips tweaked at his nipples. He almost laughed at the panicked urgency, because in so many ways he shared it.

Carefully, gently he grasped Matthew's wrists, easing one hand down and around his waist, settling the other against his belly with the clear instruction that Matthew was free to do whatever he wanted. The desk bit into his buttocks when Matthew's full weight pressed against him. The heat of Matthew's groin ground against his own, sparking an incredible rush of pleasure through them both.

"What's your hurry?" he asked against lips that tried desperately to kiss him.

"Practice," Matthew panted automatically. "Repetition gives you expertise, you've always said that. Just getting this one out of the way so I c'n do it again."

He slid his hand up and around the presented column of throat, using his thumb to brush the soft skin behind an ear. Holding Matthew's face away from his. "Stop it." Body and hands froze against him; even the trembling ceased. Eyes as dark and bottomless as the cave crevices stared hungrily, demanding. He stared back, feeling the hunger swamping him, urging him past his own instinctive restraint, until some measure of calm reflected back at him from Matthew's eyes. "This isn't a rut, Matthew. I'm not going anywhere."

Breath still just as light and quick, Matthew's lips widened, smiled at him. The hand at his belly twitched, then dropped unerringly to his crotch, pushing fabric roughly aside. Fingers wrapped without question or timidity around his turgid erection and stripped once, harshly, down his length. He felt his muscles bunch, heard his own breath hiss through his teeth. Matthew asked, "Well, what is it, then?"

More honesty than he'd have brought to this, he realized. Driven by much more than sexual need, their mutual hungers called for no one else to satisfy them. Called loudly for the rush of satiation, the urgent grinding rhythm of sex that fed so much more than just his groin. It _was_ a rut.

"My mistake," he said on his exhale, and then it was his hands that moved wildly over that expanse of shaking flesh. Matthew's shoulder blades twitched and rose under his palm, the smooth skin breaking out in goosebumps caused by anything but the cold. Muscles bunched and released wherever his hands moved, reacting everywhere to his touch. Their mouths welded together, tongues sliding sinuously with none of the expected hesitation. He felt as well as heard the steady groaning, Matthew's voice humming into his mouth as they fought to get closer to each other.

He pushed the jeans down further, baring ass and erection and tight-corded thighs, and dragged Matthew's body hard against his, forcing the wind from them both while his body rocked in instinctive rhythm. Muscles bunched under his hands, the erection at his belly ground into him, the hand on his own cock reflexively squeezing him.

So fast, so natural, like a tidal wave rearing up to sweep over everything in its path, orgasm gathered in him. He reached with one hand and tangled his fingers in Matthew's long hair, tugging hard at his head to separate their mouths. Matthew watched him, eyes wide, skin flushed and shining with sweat even here in the frigidity of the cave. He slid his free hand over the line of runner's girdle, and stroked Matthew's straining erection for the first time. A choked-off whimper caressed his ears, thick lashes fluttered as Matthew fought to keep his eyes open, and the wet heat of ejaculate splashed against his fingers as simply, as naturally, as that.

Bruce watched all of it, taking in every visual cue of pleasure, feeling every trembling attack on the shaking body, hearing sounds so like pain in the quiet, breathy voice. The bats didn't like it; he heard wings beating hard against air, felt the strong currents of air that signaled hundreds in flight. They'd get used to it. They'd have to. So dark and beautiful, this. He tensed his muscles, willing his body to the very edge of the abyss, falling over it with the white-fire flash of heat and light that consumed him, gathered in his sex, and released itself with acute, potent abandon.

Long minutes passed. Matthew's head fell forward and burrowed against the wool at his shoulder. The hand buried in his groin loosened and pulled away, and his briefs hugged his half-hard penis against his belly.

Panting against him, sweat just beginning to bead along exposed skin, Matthew pulled away and balanced on shaky legs. He glanced down at himself, at his own disarrayed clothing, then at Bruce. Almost timidly he adjusted his jeans, tucked himself back into them. But there was no apology in his eyes, and no regret. There was, in fact, not even an abatement of heat. Brushing his hair away from his face he said hungrily, "I haven't even seen you naked."

"I look like anyone else naked."

"Lemme see."

He stared at the disheveled figure, long legs planted wide, jeans still unbuttoned, tee-shirt rumpbled up baring a pale, tight stomach. "You're still hungry for it." Matthew flushed. Bruce smiled, pleased to witness a hunger that more than matched his own. "Come on," he said, finally balancing away from the desk.

"Where're we going?"

"Down."

Matthew grimaced, tugging his shirt down. "I hate the cave."

"You'll learn to love it."

"It's dark."

"So was the stairwell. So is the night."

Matthew stepped carefully up against him, tilting his head that barest degree to look up into his eyes. He smiled. "Leave your clothes here."

Bruce bent and kissed him gently, a brushing of lips that was answered by a fine new trembling in Matthew's body. He thought about gentleness, and slow care, and the conscientious, unhurried steps of initiation. Strange world for Matthew, no matter how much he welcomed it. No hurry at all now, in himself.

He pulled away and smiled, running his fingers lingeringly through the tangled length of hair. "Okay."

 

Much later Matthew stirred against him, letting currents of cool air between them that chilled his right side. "Did I ever tell you how much I hate bats?" Matthew whispered. A tongue laved his ear, wetting his skin with saliva. Long hair flowed across his neck, slick and cool like water, and sensual.

Wings fluttered along his left side, and the warmth radiating from a hundred tiny bodies heated his skin. they were inches from the fingers that stroked over his chest, pinched lazily at his nipple, but as far as he could tell, none touched Matthew. "I hope you're kidding."

"No. And yes, I know they're everywhere, that they adore you. But I hate 'em."

Wide eyed, seeing nothing at all in the pitch blackness that encompassed his whole world, the bat reflected on the perversities of life. He felt laughter ripple his belly and swallowed it, snorting instead. "It figures."

* * *

The sun had just climbed over the lip of the horizon, its full disk yellow-white with blinding, morning heat.

Bruce Wayne stood quietly at his study's wide bay window, staring out at the wide, rolling lawn all damp and glistening with dew, the high stone walls, and the stark silhouette of the city beyond. "Alfred?"

"Yes, sir?"

"When is that going to end?" he asked, vaguely irritated. Nothing yet had broken Matthew of his habit of making constant noise, like birds chirruping from dawn 'til dusk.

"I daresay it never will, sir," Alfred demurred, glancing from Bruce to the ignorant, self-absorbed Matthew, and back. "He will always be significantly your junior; he will always provide a constant source of distraction, of possible irritation." Alfred sighed, said dryly, "Wonderful, isn't it?"

Bruce offered his mentor a smile, watched him collect the tray and go. He turned from the window and stared, listening absently to the subconscious clicks and whistles from the body in the chair. Tongue clicking, teeth tapping, bare heel smacking against paper on wood—and the kid didn't even realize he did it. Bruce had toyed with alter images through the icy winter months. As snow melted and things began to grow, Matthew was growing with them. Bruce had watched doubt after doubt burn like morning fog off the solid, broadening body, and still nothing appropriate for a bat's familiar had come to mind. But those constant, maddening noises—

"Robin." The body started, eyes looked up through a veil of fallen hair, eyes that narrowed in abrupt recognition of the intent, and full lips drew back into a smile.

"Robin?"

Bruce shrugged, and stood away from the window. "They do hate bats, you know. If not because bats travel in groups and drive them from nesting areas, then because they eat the same food: fruits, seeds."

The soft laughter rose and echoed warmly through the space between them, brightening an already sunny room. "Well then," Matthew chuckled, "that's _gotta_ be it."

-the end-

Author's note: written after the first Batman movie, and originally published in _Concupiscence 3_, October 1993.


End file.
